


i know where i'm going, but i don't want to leave

by babybel



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Angst, Found Family, Gen, Post-Audio: Absolution, also major character death isn't tagged because this is set after it happens but he's Dead, i was crying a little when i wrote this :/, just. charley trying to get some closure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22964149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel
Summary: The light in his room, Charley reasoned, shouldn’t still be on. The ship should’ve known better and shut it off. There should at least be some sign that he was gone. His things should be put away, the lights should be off, his bed should be made. It didn’t seem right that everything was just unfinished, like he’d be coming back to tidy up.-Charley visits C'rizz's room before she makes the Doctor drop her off.
Relationships: C'rizz & Charley Pollard
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	i know where i'm going, but i don't want to leave

**Author's Note:**

> literally it's taken me this long to process absolution let alone to write about it so. >:'(  
> title from you're the one by kate bush. whole song doesn't quite fit, certain lines REALLY do.

Charley thought she’d felt the limit of exhaustion when her senses returned in the glass tube, the weight of those days or weeks or months catching up to her all at once until she could barely stand. She’d been wrong, as it turns out. There is nothing more exhausting than watching your brother die. 

She’d gone to her room with the intention of packing but the moment the door was closed behind her even so much as looking at anything made her feel too overwhelmed to breathe. She sat on the ground, not wanting to go to her desk or to her bed. She couldn’t. After all, C’rizz had sat at her desk when he read to her, and had cuddled in bed with her whenever they came off an especially upsetting adventure. She couldn’t touch anything he’d touched; she couldn’t bear it. 

After maybe half an hour, maybe more, she made herself move, made herself drag the suitcase from under her bed. It hadn’t been hers, not originally. She’d come onto the TARDIS with nothing. She’d picked it up later, when she and the Doctor had to pretend to be tourists in order to solve a murder, and she’d kept it just in case it might come in useful. 

Well, it was coming in useful. 

She didn’t have much, and it was all things she’d collected after coming aboard. This alien trinket. This locket from 1830. This little potted plant from a planet a hundred million lightyears from home. Where would she even go?

She stopped, a little gyroscope type thing in her hand. Her mother and sisters all thought she was dead. Everyone on Earth thought she was dead. Maybe she’d have to ask the Doctor to drop her off in a different time, a hundred years after when she left from. But that wouldn't be home. Edith, she realized. She could go back and stay with Edith. Get a job, do some work so that Edith didn’t have to be on her feet all day. 

The thought of it was so unfulfilling she felt sick. There really wouldn’t be a way for her to go back to her old life without feeling empty every day. It felt like the Doctor had played a trick on her. 

She still packed, though. She folded up her clothes numbly, and put away her comb and her mirror. When her room was empty, she realized she didn’t know what else to do. She didn’t want to go to the console, she didn’t think she could bear to look at the Doctor now, and, really, she wasn’t ready to go home. She wanted to leave, but the preparations had passed too quickly, and now she was faced with actually doing it. 

No, she was too tired. It was happening too fast, everything was happening too fast. 

She made herself get up, suitcase dangling heavily from one hand, and she made the trip from her room to C’rizz’s like she was sleepwalking. She probably shouldn’t go; she’d just be hurting herself, but she felt like she had to see it before she left. She set her suitcase down by his door, and hoped that he’d locked it and she wouldn’t be able to get in. She knew he couldn’t have. 

She sighed, and pushed the door open. Everything was just as it had been left, things strewn across the floor where he’d been trying to rearrange them and tidy things up. She blew out a breath as steadily as she could, and her stomach clenched.

When she bent to pick up the silly little bone necklace he’d tried to give her, her knees nearly gave out. The light, she reasoned, shouldn’t still be on. The ship should’ve known better and shut it off. There should at least be some sign that he was gone. His things should be put away, the lights should be off, his bed should be made. It didn’t seem right that everything was just unfinished, like he’d be coming back to tidy up. 

She rubbed her eyes, and knelt down. With one hand - the other still holding the necklace - she started cleaning his things up, bit by bit, until everything was put away on a shelf or in the box under his desk. 

Then she went to make his bed, and just stared at it. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it. As much as she wanted everything to be neat and clean like he’d want it to be, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this unmade bed was maybe the last thing that proved that he’d lived here at all. It was the only part of the room that looked inhabited now. 

She thought that maybe she could put it off, just for a little bit. Carefully, she sat on the edge of the bed. 

Once she and C’rizz had established a bit of trust, she’d spent a lot of time here. Cross-legged at the foot of the bed while he paced the room ranting about whatever had most recently ticked him off, sitting next to him to read while he looked over her shoulder or busied himself with his own book, cuddled up with him under the blankets because one of them had a nightmare, or just because. She shuddered. The room was too cold. C’rizz wouldn’t like it to be cold. 

She made to ask the ship to make it warmer, in hopes that it might listen. It had listened to her like that before, on the odd occasion. “Could you-” She stopped, eyes immediately filling with tears. Talking was so much harder than thinking. “He’d want it to be warm,” she managed, and then her throat closed up and she grabbed the blanket to hide her face in. Her chest hurt so badly she nearly couldn’t breathe. 

None of her usual tricks were working to get ahold of herself, and she was stuck just trying to unclench her jaw, ungrit her teeth, breathe as evenly as possible. She thought she’d already cried all she could possibly cry, but she’d been wrong. It was just the fact that he’d never be here again, the fact that she wouldn’t get to try to explain an Earth joke to him again, or have him braid her hair again, or teach him how to swim, or listen to him read to her anymore. His absence was too loud, it was too much, and she didn’t know what to do. 

Maybe this was how her sisters felt when the airship crashed. 

But no, they couldn’t have, because they didn’t have to watch. Not that she’d have it another way; getting to be there and talk to him was something, even though when put into perspective it was nothing. Still, she saw him disappear, she saw him crumble and break up and come apart. She couldn’t stop seeing it, when she closed her eyes. 

She made herself look up and put the blanket down, and made herself stop thinking about it. Of course she’d still think about it, how could she not, but at least it wouldn’t be intentional. She stood up, and hung the bones around her neck so she could make the bed with both hands. 

_I’m not erasing him_ , she kept drumming into her mind _. Nothing can erase him I’m not erasing him_. It was just that he’d want everything to be tidied up. He couldn’t stand it if he left things like this. Unfinished. He’d want his bed made. 

That was enough to stop her hands shaking, the knowledge that she had to carry this out for him. She tucked the blanket in around the corners, smoothed out the wrinkles, folded his sheet over at the top. It was clean and neat and just like he’d want it. 

Having it done didn’t make her feel any better.

She knew, at some point, that there would have to be acceptance. What would have to happen between now and then, what could possibly change to get her to that point, she didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine ever being alright again. 

But things were changing. The lights in the room were dimming, and for a moment she was ready to run out to the console and smack the Doctor because they were already instructing their ship to treat the room like it was uninhabited. Then, she remembered that she’d wished the lights off herself, not an hour ago, and felt silly for getting upset. 

She kept pressing a hand to her forehead and feeling her skin, warm and damp. She was getting a headache. She had to get off this ship, get back to England or France or god knows where. She surely had somewhere to be that wasn’t here, but the more she thought about it the more adrift she felt. 

With a choked sigh, she realized the room was getting warmer. It felt like solace, maybe, or something close to it. It was like the ship had waited to adjust the temperature purposefully, to give her a bit of time to process, or to grieve. She bit the inside of her cheek and pushed a breath between her lips, slowly, trying not to cry. If the lights and warmth weren’t the ship cueing her to leave, she didn’t know what they were. Maybe an attempt at honoring last wishes for C’rizz, but that didn’t even bear thinking about.

She went to the door, and before she left she felt out the light switch by the bureau and turned the lights off fully. Then she locked the door, closed it behind her, and picked her suitcase up. _Charlotte Pollard_ , she tried, reaching for that confident, over-educated inner voice she once was able to summon so easily, before she’d actually done anything. _Edwardian Adventuress. Off to start a new chapter in her book._

She stopped. It didn’t mean anything anymore. It probably never did. 

She sighed, and turned back to the door, leaning against it. She pressed her forehead to the cool hardwood, and she wished a last goodbye and a last I love you to C’rizz. Then she straightened her spine, squared her shoulders, and got herself ready to take her suitcase and find a new home.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @lesbiandonnanoble !


End file.
